"You are surely of High Caste," said the Player, "to have such gold."
"May I take you to your home?" I asked.
The Tarn Keeper, breaking away from the Saddle Maker, came over to us. He was a short man, with close-cropped brown hair, a squarish face. I noted the patch of the Greens on his shoulder. He smiled at me. "You did well," said he, "Killer," and with a grin turned and left.
I turned again to the Player, but he was now standing there in the street, seeming somehow alone, though I stood at his side.
"You are of the Assassins?" he asked.
"Yes," I said, "it is my caste."
He pressed the piece of gold into my hand and turned away, stumbling from me, reaching out with his right hand to guide himself along the wall.
"Wait!" I cried. "You have won this! Take it!" I ran to him.
"No!" he cried, striking out wildly with a hand, trying to force me away. I stepped back. He stood there, panting, not seeing me, his body bent over, angry. "It is black gold," he said. "It is black gold." He then turned away, and began to grope his way from the place of the game.
I stood there in the street and watched him go, in my hand holding the piece of gold which I had meant to be his.
4 — CERNUS
"Place your first sword before me," I said, "that I may kill him."
Cernus of Ar, of the House of Cernus, studied me, his large face impassive, his eyes revealing nothing, like gray stones. His large hands rested over the arms of the curved curule chair in which he sat, which was mounted on a platform of stone, about a foot high and twelve feet square. In the base of the platform there were mounted six slave rings.
Cernus of Ar wore a course black robe, woven probably from the wool of the bounding, two-legged Hurt, a domesticated marsupial raised in large numbers in the environs of several of Gor's northern cities. The Hurt, raised on large, fenced ranches, herded by domesticated sleen and sheared by chained slaves, replaces its wool four times a year. The House of Cernus, I had heard, had interests in several of the Hurt Ranches near the city. The black of the garment of Cernus was broken only by three stripes of silk sewn length-wise on his left sleeve, two stripes of blue enclosing one of yellow.
When I had spoken, several of the men-at-arms of Cernus had shifted uneasily. Some had grasped their weapons.
"I am the first sword in the House of Cernus," said Cernus.
The room in which I stood was the Hall of the House of Cernus. It was a large room, some seventy feet square and with a ceiling of some fifty feet in height. Set in the wall to my left, as in the base of the stone platform, were slave rings, a dozen or so. The room was innocent of the energy bulbs of the Caste of Builders. In the walls were torch racks, but there were now no torches. The room was lit, and grayly, by sunlight now filtering in through several narrow, barred windows set very high in the thick stone of the walls. It reminded me, in its way, of a room in a prison and such, in its way, it was, for it was a room in the House of Cernus, greatest of the slave houses of Ar.
Cernus wore about his neck, on a golden chain, a medallion which bore the crest of the House of Cernus, a tarn with slave chains grasped in its talons. Behind Cernus, on the wall, there hung a large tapestry, richly done in red and gold, which bore the same sign.
"I have come," I said, " to rent my sword to the House of Cernus."
"We have been expecting you," said Cernus.
I revealed no sign of surprise.
"It is understood by me," said Cernus, evidently relaying certain reports which had reached him, "that Portus, of the House of Portus, sought to hire your sword in vain."
"It is true," I said.
Cernus smiled. "Otherwise," he said, "you surely would not have come here — for in this house we are innocent."
This was an allusion to the mark which I wore upon my forehead.
I had spent the night following the game in an inn, had washed away the mark and this morning, early, when I had arisen, had placed it again on my forehead. After a bit of cold bosk, some water and a handful of peas, I had come to the House of Cernus.
It was not yet the seventh Gorean hour but already the slaver was up, conducting his affairs, when I had been ushered into his presence. At his right hand there was a Scribe, an angular, sullen man with deep eyes, with tablets and stylus. It was Caprus of Ar, Chief Accountant to the House of Cernus. He lived in the house and seldom went abroad in the streets. It was with this man that Vella had been placed, her registration, papers and purchase having been arranged.
In the House of Cernus, after the sheet, bracelets, leash and collar had been removed, agents of the House of Cernus had checked her fingerprints against those on the papers. She had then been examined thoroughly by the Physicians of the House of Cernus. Then, found acceptable, she had knelt while agents of the House signed the receipt of her delivery and endorsed her papers, retaining one set, giving one set to the seller's agent, for forwarding to the Cylinder of Documents. Then she had submitted herself to the House of Cernus, kneeling before one of its agents, lowering her head, extending her arms, wrists crossed. She had then been collared and turned over to Caprus, to be combed and cleaned, for the smell of the pens was on her, given two sets of slave livery and instructed in her duties. Caprus was said to be a friend of Priest-Kings.
There had been no difficulty, it seemed, in placing Vella in the House of Cernus. Yet I feared for her safety. It was a dangerous game.
"May I ask," inquired Cernus, "for whom you wear on your forehead the mark of the black dagger?"
I would speak of these things, to some extent, with Cernus, for it was important, though perilous, that he should understand what purported to be my mission. I was now time that certain things should be revealed, that they might leak into the streets of Ar.
"I come to avenge," I said, "Tarl Cabot, he of Ko-ro-ba."
There were cries of astonishment from the men-at-arms. I smiled to myself. I had little doubt but that in an Ahn the story would be in all the Paga taverns of Ar, on all the bridges and in all the cylinders.
"In this city," said Cernus, "Tarl Cabot, he of Ko-ro-ba, is known as Tarl of Bristol."
"Yes," I said.
"I have heard sing of him," said Cernus. I observed the slaver closely. He seemed troubled, shocked.
Two of his men rushed from the room. I heard them shouting in the corridors of the house.
"I regret to hear it," said Cernus, at last. Then he looked at me. "There will be few in Ar," he said, "who would not wish you well in your dark work."
"Who could kill Tarl of Bristol?" cried out a man-at-arms, not even thinking that Cernus had not acknowledged his right to speak.
"A knife on the high bridge," said I, "in the vicinity of the Cylinder of Warriors-at the Twentieth Ahn-in the darkness and the shadows of the lamps."
The men-at-arms looked at one another. "It could only have been so," said one.
I myself felt bitterly about a poorly lit bridge in the vicinity of the Cylinder of Warriors-and about a certain hour on a certain day-for it was on that bridge that a young man, of the Warriors, had walked perhaps not more than a quarter of an Ahn before I myself would have passed that way. His crime, if he had had one, was that his build was rather like mine, and his hair, in the shadows, the half-darkness of the lamps and the three moons of Gor, might have seemed to one who watched like mine. The older Tarl, the Koroban master of arms, and myself had found the body, and near it, the patch of green caught in a crack in the grillwork of one of the lamps on the bridge, where perhaps it had been torn from the shoulder of a running, stumbling man. The older Tarl had turned the body in his hands, and we had looked on it, and both of us had regarded one another. "This knife," said the Older Tarl, "was to have been yours."